


Map of the Problematique

by auld_cheeky



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, If you weren't aware these men have issues but they have each other as well, James is not quite the mi6 golden boy, Lots of beds and even more benches, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Skyfall, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2017-12-28 04:35:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 20,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/987710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auld_cheeky/pseuds/auld_cheeky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Q had no reason to believe his own position was on the line, really. But a dim trembling in his gut agreed that it seemed it would no longer be considered an unrecoverable loss to MI6 if 007 was deemed redundant."</p><p>In which the 'will they/won't they' has little to do with 00Q and everything to do with MI6.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title filched from the Muse track of the same name, which MuseWiki explains as follows: “The title is a reference to the book The Limits to Growth (1972) and the Club of Rome think-tank who would create a ‘map of the problematique’ detailing the ‘global problematique’ – a set of likely challenges the world might face in the near future.”
> 
> Betaed by the absolutely extraordinary one-in-a-million circ_bamboo – thank you for keeping me sane, covering my ass, and for being insanely kind through the entire painstaking writing process.
> 
> And thank you, as ever, to the lovely, incorrigible, kind, brilliant fallovermelikestars – I couldn't have done this, and much more, without you. I send you all my love and this fic, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this and other chapters (all brief mentions): implied/referenced drug use, past underage sex, mention of corporal punishment

Very few individuals relished visiting Hyde Park on its fog-ridden, windy and harsh days. 

If during his 'days off' James Bond chose to do just that – to bear the brash scrape of wind at his cheeks and press on through the curling fog that coated the park on the average London day – it was near-guaranteed that sooner or later a certain young man would make an appearance at Queen Elizabeth Gates, too, all swallowed up in a mocha-coloured anorak as usual. Or sometimes he'd wear that charcoal sports jacket, the one that suited his grey eyes unapologetically well.

Every time, Q would make steady strides to the same park bench and proceed to take a seat there, rain or shine. Some days he carried curry take-away (always from the same place) and sifted through it as the sun swept low between the lime trees. Others he sat for mere minutes under the downpour before rising again and meandering home in the opposite direction he'd come. Torrential conditions or worse were all that could keep him away – winter's flurries in particular left his eyeglasses practically opaque.

“Developing a routine is something I would advise even civilians against, Q,” James had said once back at HQ.

“I would advise you break your habit of following me, 007.”

Bond's spoilt-child personality often emerged around these moments. The fact remained that you couldn't have lucky number seven without several other 00s to count that high, not to mention more to bring up the rear. And Q wasn't simply James' quartermaster – he _certainly_ was not anyone else's either, not by a long shot, but the fact remained that Q had other responsibilities. 

Even when Bond had 'down time,' which routinely involved Moneypenny threatening to stick him with a house arrest bracelet/shock collar hybrid she'd fashioned herself, that didn't always mean his Generation Y counterpart was forced to surface aboveground as well. _"Your lives have never_ been _fair, 007,"_ Eve had said. _"Why start now?"_

After missions like Skyfall (or like Istanbul, if James hadn't taken the initiative himself), regulation dictated both men be put out of commission for 48 hours, more if superiors saw fit; they were a package deal, a team, and if James had gone through hell Q was the one who'd scratched and clawed to retrieve him from its depths. These days M strictly interpreted 'out of commission' as off the premises, so that any stays in the hospital wing still meant enduring two days of fresh air. When he'd first explained those specifications to Bond after his return from Scotland the agent had already been in restraints due to severe night terrors; M had been saved from bodily harm purely by chance.

Of course, in retrospect Bond had been saved from causing himself much greater harm. Later that week in a visit at his bedside Moneypenny hinted that M didn't have any concrete evidence (he wouldn't find any either, she mentioned under her breath), but he sensed there were inaccuracies in Bond's records. The unspoken agreement there was that for 007, being subjected to bedrest may have been intolerable, but being reevaluated and deemed resolutely unfit for fieldwork would have been a deathblow.

“I might also advise you use the Underground after dark, Q, if you're so averse to the rising price of cab fares. You know, rather than keeping the company of a nonce or two in one of the pitch-black stretches of the park.”

“I strongly suggest you calculate my chances of such encounters occurring then compare them to the chance of an automobile accident – _or_ a metro incident, 007. Now, that's adding probabilities there, understood? And don't forget to use the most up-to-date figures possible – I seem to recall MI6 itself has a track record with the rail system you'll have to take into account. It’s not that I’m incapable of taking the Tube, I’d really just rather _not._ ”

Bond had sighed then, which had been... unsettling. “Consider it, will you please?”

Not once had James seen Q pull out any sort of device while he sat on that bench. Not his laptop with its glare-resistant screen protector, not the tablet that never left his elbow at headquarters, not even a flimsy e-reader.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. He'd seen Q extract his mobile from his pocket a handful of times, prompted by alerts specific to work that went off concurrently with James' own mobile as he sat across the path. Only in these moments would Q relent and catch Bond's gaze as they both stood, and he'd acknowledge the agent existed only long enough for them to synch up their footfalls; no time was wasted on discourse, this was what they did. When they were subsequently released once again from their roles in SIS, they would fall back into place. It seemingly never occurred to James that however perplexing Q's behaviour during these suspensions, his own defied reasonable or unreasonable explanations alike.

On the single occasion Bond had witnessed Q take a call that was decidedly not matched by echoes in his own pocket, it’d been far more of a learning experience than Q probably would have liked. The way he had pursed his lips at the sight of the mobile’s screen, eyes glassy with something bitter like defeat... Q had waited until a rise in foot traffic could carry him away, barely hiding amongst the coats and jackets. James had exercised unfamiliar restraint, knowing such a transparent opportunity was much more likely indicative of a distracted surrender; it was not the arch invitation to follow that James envisioned receiving at times.

One May afternoon shortly after Bond had returned from a fortnight undercover unearthing the Peruvian cartel responsible for kidnapping three British expatriates in the past year, the secret agent sat on a bench of his own, legs sprawled in front of him to let the weak warmth of sunlight blossom in the dark twilled material of his trousers. After not one but two intensive physical examinations, the extent of his injuries was deemed limited to a busted ankle, a long but shallow knife wound along his left bicep – “ _Off by a mile,”_ James had smirked as he toyed with the mugs on Q's desk, eyes absent of focus – and a gash above his brow that remained a vibrant scarlet under the stitches, noticeable even from meters away.

Q had been told that James had passed every last physical and psychological appraisal he went through ( _like property, like an asset, like a depreciating investment, like a bleeding Aston Martin_ ). But Tanner had passed along stats that outlined the amount of ammunition Bond had used (of the SIS' provisions alone, as they didn’t even know what other weapons had been discharged), as well as the transcript of Bond's psychological evaluation with everything but numbers and strategic explanations blacked out.

At best, the quartermaster could try and convince himself he was being handed such documents as a messenger; the ammunitions record would be needed upstairs to be accounted for with finance, the copy of the evaluation for Q to pass on to his subordinates in order to assess tactical efficiency, their weaponry's strengths and shortcomings. But Tanner knew how to use a scanner (though he still preferred the fax, the perverse bastard) and furthermore he knew Q wasn't being paid to act as anyone's personal assistant.

With stealth that really wasn't remotely necessary, Q had added the papers to the disarray inside his satchel as he packed up for his days-long 'holiday,' destined to consist of neither rest nor relaxation, it seemed, this time around. He had no reason to believe his own position was on the line, really. But a dim trembling in his gut agreed that it seemed it would no longer be considered an unrecoverable loss to MI6 if 007 was deemed redundant – and yet, in that imagined situation Q could only articulately describe his own work as seeming to matter _much_ _less_.

So there Q sat in that damned charcoal coat with its sleeves that were just a millimetre too long for comfort, across from the man whose termination, as it were, it suddenly seemed Q's job to prevent. And to further complicate the succession of thoughts firing in his mind, Q truly could not decide whether he felt this task existed as part of his vocation or of his calling, so to speak. He could not help but wonder what had caused those two to feel like such crucially disparate things.

“I cannot help but be curious,” Bond had opened once, “as to what draws you to that location above all others.” After the single attempt he’d made weeks before at taking a seat alongside his quartermaster under a light February snowfall, which had been thwarted by a look made only icier by the thinning of Q’s pale lips, James had since kept all such queries to office hours.

“I distinctly recall your bragging ‘there is nothing James Bond _cannot_ do,'” Q had parried. “Knowing you’re a man who holds his own word to a high standard, I suggest you try harder to tamp down that curiosity.”

What James had wanted to ask was why a thousand other things. Setting had never held much weight in his mind: just because he studied at Cambridge didn’t mean the academia wasn’t comprised of twats, just because he’d awoken in Dubai didn’t mean he couldn’t fall asleep in The Hague, just because he was given a more spacious office didn’t mean he’d be inclined to spend any more time in it, and just because he came from some place didn’t mean he would ever want to go back.

So the very last question that came to his mind – and thus, the one he felt pushed to ask – was _Why there?_ He’d have much preferred _Why the bloody hell do you smoke Café Crèmes? Why an indoors profession? Why no umbrella? Why green curry, not red or yellow? Why not_ that _phone call?_ _Why no gadgets? Why not me?_

But clearly Q did not feel the same way. Setting was of the utmost importance to the man who relied on CCTV and satellite nav resources, who had calculatedly seated them before _The Fighting Temeraire_ for their first rendezvous, who ordered the same curry from the same place (that sat amongst a row of identical curry places), who always sat at the same confounded bench in Hyde Park for no discernable reason whatsoever.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like the tags say, definitely not a linear timeline!

“My mum gave me hep A when I was eight,” Q says, straddling the high back of a chair placed at the island in Bond’s kitchen. He’s wearing a navy dressing gown that reveals the plain shirt and boxer briefs he slept in. Bond crosses to the curtains, pretends not to notice the dust patterns in the air as he opens them for the first time in weeks. He waits as the kettle warms.

“She’d been using for most my life, my father was God-knows-where.” The man’s gaze is crisp behind his glasses – he looks as if he’s merely contemplating the chance of rain. “We lived in a revolting _hole_ and she would work two to three jobs in the times when she was lucid enough to string a sentence together. Other times it didn’t matter where her fix came from, who was coming ‘round our home, who I even was. She used drugs to feel less, or to feel nothing at all – I’ve only ever used to feel a bit more, really. My dad sent cheques every few months... not big ones, mind, but enough to satisfy Mum; she’d never really fallen out of love with him.

“When I was maybe fifteen and had long since moved in with my gran, I was on a trip down memory lane and I read about the ways you can transmit the virus. Lucky for me, that, because a couple weeks later I lost it to this honey-tongued boy who was in Sixth-Form – he didn’t care for condoms, and I wouldn’t have either. Didn’t have a clue why shirtlifters needed to bother with contraception.” Q’s chin rests where his hands are interwoven on the back of the chair, his voice airy and dazzling as always. His hair sweeps in layer after dark layer across his forehead, inky curls (longer than when they’d first met) picking up glints of sable in the white light from over London.

James passes over a cup of tea and leans his hip along the counter. “So if I’d met you even a year or two ago you’d’ve sounded like a proper Eastender, then.” Bond’s eyes are sharp as nails, yet he isn’t taking any more than given, for once.

“Funny. I never tire of the age jokes. Yes, at one point I sounded the part.”

“Grandmother beat some class into you, did she?”

Q pauses, lips rubbing together in thought. “She hit me for different reasons, I think. Stop deflecting, you’re not even the one who’s divulging.” 

James indicates Q should go on, occupies his own mouth with a sip of English Breakfast.

“Needless to say – or not, really, I guess I really should say it quite clearly – I was not sexually active in primary school. That’s not how I caught it. In fact, I distinctly remember that in the spring before I became ill Mum was so fucking loved-up it took me days to catch on that she’d changed colour for a different reason, that she was sick and spewing and aching because she was legitimately ailing. She’d take any needle offered her almost hungrily, really, from anyone’s hand and off anyone’s floor regardless of the excretions that had been there first... in the putrefaction and squalor of our existence back then I’m not surprised it made its way to her hits.

“Seems I took my mum’s shit in more ways than one, way back when.” And it’s a bit nauseating that now is the first time anything reminiscent of a smile hits Q’s face.

“So,” he continues, “I was ill for almost five months, spent my summer in and out of bouts of fever and vomiting and fatigue. For how much we all hate English summers, missing an entire holiday because my mother never bothered to feed me anything that wasn’t out of a can, never paid a minute of her attention to my wellbeing... Well, I rather think she had more of a positive influence on my behaviour than she ever consciously set her mind to.”

“So you go out.”

“So I go out, 007. I stretch my damn legs.”

“But you affix your eyes to screens the other 23 hours of the day.”

“I very nearly curl up into a ball if you throw me in a confined space, though.” The young man sits up again, grabbing for a clementine orange from a bowl of fruits on the marble countertop. Bond’s arm jets out and grasps Q’s wrist, strong but not tight.

“Don’t... eat that,” James says, looking as sheepish as his face probably allows for. He twists their interlocked hands so their palms face up and draws his own eyes to a pale green spongy part of the citrus’ peel.

“I can– I’ll go out and find some pastries or scones.” Bond drops the long ‘o’ sound like the Scotsman he thinks he isn’t.

“Finish your tea, James. Let me put some trousers on. I’d much rather venture into your natural habitat than stay sequestered here like your sullen rent boy.” – Which, _natural habitat, hardly._ “–I’ll bet that my nose zeroes in on the best _scone_ vendor in the quadrant in five minutes or less.”

James has pushed the bowl across the counter to sit just above the rubbish bin on the floor, and now he allows the final dregs of tea to slip between his lips. He eyes the man before him cautiously.

Q simpers. “Can’t really bring myself to be concerned about the delicate sensibilities of your neighbors, I’m afraid. I didn’t need to sleep with you to know you’re in no way subtle about your conquests.”

James wants to be able to deliver a concrete defence against that word choice, wants to be able to negate it if only for the sake of his dignity. He can’t say for certain what he has or hasn’t used Q for, whether the man could be considered a ‘conquest.’ This isn’t a scenario where he had aimed to kill or to acquire information, and if it had just been a warm body he wanted, he can’t lie to himself; there are countless other twenty-somethings he could have pulled with much fewer complications than whatever _this_ was.

Conceivably, James could also be using Q because of this perceived psychological suppression he apparently suffers from, where he is living a shoddy lie because he doesn’t spend time with anyone he can ‘talk shop’ with – for God’s sake, James recently discovered that even Eve helps deplete Tanner’s brandy supplies once every few weeks. Neither man has brought up MI6 yet, though, not even breathing a mention; they don’t have anything to bring up anyway, they’re out until Monday and if Q knows things then he isn’t sharing, something he often finds hard to resist.

“Not subtle about it in the way that I love them and leave them, rob them blind, or slit their throats?” James asks, in a tone that sounds like, ‘ _You know, you’re right, I think we may get a light sprinkle this afternoon.’_

With a reproachful glance, Q slides backwards off his perch and strolls off to the master bedroom. “You know, 007,” he calls behind him, “I’m all too aware of everything you’ve done – things of which you are and are not proud. Trying to shock me is a waste of breath. When I want people to keep their distance, I use my words.”

Q pokes his head back around the corner a moment later, dressing gown gone. “What’s off limits?” he asks.

Bond mutters, “Left side of the closet, the two jumpers on the chair in the corner, and the drawers by the light switch.” Q nods, disappears. James yanks himself around the counter, making quick strides to follow. He finds Q amidst the contents of his wardrobe, having added only some grey socks to his ensemble. One of his arms is still inside his white tee while the other, freed, drops in panic from the drawer by the light switch.

“Not touching!” Q breathes. “On–only looking.” He seems to be torn between undressing even more in the tension of the room or keeping his arm in an undignified cotton tangle.

James is neither surprised nor happy. He works his jaw in slow circles, then says, “And when you ‘use your words’ you don’t often find that your efforts are for naught?”

“I didn’t expect you to keep a Walther next to your cufflinks; I thought your cufflinks _were_ what was off-limits. Wanted to see what the big deal was.”

“You think that—? Q, I wouldn’t care if you pilfered every accessory in this room,” Bond growls.

“Why in God’s name do you keep a pistol – a fully loaded, _damned_ pistol – where anybody can get their hands on it?” And there he is again with the anybodies and the conquests. “I know this isn’t registered, Bond.”

“Nobody gets their hands on anything I don’t want them to touch in here, got it? If _anyone_ else was able to get this close it would only be because I’d already stopped breathing.”

Q has shed the shirt completely and stands still looking over the rows of cufflinks. “Right, how silly of me,” he says. “If someone beards the lion in his den, the only way they could get this far is if the lion has perished while fighting for Queen and country.”

He meets James’ eyes silently, and breaks out in a lopsided smile. “May I _please_ hold your pistol, Mr Bond?” he murmurs, still dimpling.

“I am loathe to admit even _I_ have used that line before. Get yourself sorted, please, it’s nearly midday.”

“But first?” The young man raises an eyebrow lasciviously, but as usual he looks just a smidgen like a presumptuous schoolboy.

“Yeah, alright,” James mumbles. Q bounces on the balls of his feet, smirks and dives in to grab the Walther, cradling it in his palm with something like a fond caress.

“You know we really haven’t been to the gun range for ages,” Q says. James still stands in the doorway, mouth propped open indelicately.

“Rather thought you meant something else...” Bond trails off.

Q looks up to the side as if rudely awakened from a pleasant dream, rests the gun back in its case and notes the barest of swelling in the other man’s denims. Yes, definitely not the most discreet partner James could’ve chosen for a liaison.

“Oh, don’t do that,” Q says, and the way he moans it is anything but randy – James feels more like he’s messed the carpet with his shoes.

“We can address that any time, James,” he continues, fingers sliding pairs of trousers across the rack. “To be sure, the shops won’t be selling breakfast all day, and now you’ve got my hopes up.”

“I could say the same, you knob.”

His quartermaster turns to face him in just trunks and socks, skin taut and tawny and warm especially under the golden lighting. His torso is lithe and smooth, leanly dripping into a v-line; below the cut of his pants, his legs are a little knobbly, a little paler. Slender and lanky and bony and raw and yielding and _fuck._

A laugh gleams in Q’s eyes. “ _Any time_ , pillock. I’m going to clothe myself now. Stay or leave, but don’t close the door, please.”


	3. Chapter 3

_If Bond’s dismissed it’s those bastards’ own damn faults,_ Q thought back as he sat on his bench, watching as the man in question let his eyes drift shut for several brief moments, inhaling the pure spring breeze.

Peru had been ten different sorts of carnage no one had prepared for. James was sent in with the intent to gather intelligence, to come back in one piece after deconstructing the dynamics and workings between the cartels responsible for producing most of Britain’s coke. Bond spent almost the entire two weeks undetected, drifting in and out of contact – Q had practically wanted to swallow five Diazepams and fly over to bug the entire Amazon himself – and reporting on his goings on in discrete bits and pieces.

No one had bothered to mention the fact outright, but he and Q had been doled out assignments below their skill level for almost two months by that point. This was the type of ‘benching’ Moneypenny had gotten a taste of while Bond was on his way to Shanghai; the two of them could only assume it wouldn’t last forever. Or would SIS keep the man on, steadily demoting 007 until he ended up a bike messenger with unusually excellent shooting accuracy? If Bond ever fucked up, a slap on the wrist was probably the most M should ever bother with in terms of punishment – his message usually wasn’t received no matter what. That said, neither Q nor James had fucked up with Silva, but only one of them believed that.

What they were both suffering from was the bureaucrats’ continued lack of faith in Bond’s abilities – a lack that was unfounded, detrimental, and on its way to driving someone up a wall. And if the agency was to risk his life in such placements, they could at least distribute their resources so Bond had backup in the same _hemisphere_ as he was during these missions.

Somehow the people Bond was tracking successfully passed kilos and kilos of cocaine across the border into Brazil; somehow Bond followed. The traffickers engaged native dealers at a meet-up within the second hour. At headquarters the interpreter, who’d been running on as little sleep as Q for the past week, instantly quieted, her eyes widening in abrupt panic.

“I don’t– I can’t,” the woman stuttered.

“What’s going on? What are they saying?” Q pushed, still watching what he could gauge of James’ urban surroundings on the monitors above their heads.

“I can’t understand the other speakers,” she replied, sibilants caught in a lisp, her voice high and breathy. “I can’t even follow portugués ‘ _padrao_ ’ – here on the Continent, you know?”

 _Bloody fuck,_ Q’s mind elegantly provided, _bloody of course they go to Brazil instead of_ any other country _in South America._

And then, when it had gotten bad and Tanner was frantically phoning numbers on a long list of translators ( _God forbid SIS have someone on hand for the sixth most popular language in the world_ ), it got worse still. In rapid succession, agitated voices began to ring out on the other end of the earpiece, far too close to 007’s wire for comfort; then, without warning, the connection dropped. The only relief in that second was knowing the reception had been to blame; Q’s equipment made markedly different tones to indicate no satellite signal versus no signal, full stop. And what little relief that was.

The transmission came back online and everyone within ten meters of Q’s office heard a sickening crunch over the speakers. In fleeting horror he attributed the sound to bone before realizing it must have been a discovery of Bond’s earpiece, which contained one of two microphones that were on the agent’s person at all times. The MI6 personnel were then able to hear the chilling beat of Bond’s footsteps on gravel pavement, his breath shaking out laboured and erratic. Bond was caught off guard, had become hunted and discomposed.

The earpiece had been chucked aside somewhere and would be useless to them now, or so Q was forced to assume – the GPS suggested no change in the instrument’s position in minutes. Nonetheless, Q continued to narrate his motions, or rather continued to talk himself through their attempts to pinpoint the agent, harboring the throwaway wish the traffickers were exceedingly dense and the action in Brazil was suspended for a moment.

“007, I have no eyes on you, get yourself to a public place.” He knew both the hope and the request were ridiculous, and wished he could be left to retrieve Bond without worrying how he himself looked or felt, in front of Ms Fonseca or anyone else. Reeling, eyes burning from exhaustion and anxiety, Q felt the panic scrabbling under his skin try to tempt him away from the sequence of logical contingency plans in his head. The quartermaster had always known if any ounce of self-doubt ever prevented him from doing his job, ever threw him off enough to cost an agent his or her life, no amount of ‘holiday’-ing could help him forgive that failure. Distraction had never been an option.

“Bond, your location is 300 kilometres west of Rio Branco; your priority is extraction now.” Bond was MI6’s last priority even then, when he had a number of armed men at his heels, when a routine information gathering journey was seconds away from becoming a ruthless shoot-out at best, but most likely an international incident, complete with the torture and kidnap of Britain’s leading secret agent. Q scoffed at that. _‘Young man’s game,’ my ass, Mallory._

Thankfully, but only marginally so, the proceedings turned the way of a gunfight. Bond was on his feet – gaining ground, it sounded like. From what they could hear, the Brazilian dealers were adding more fire and manpower to the fray – the deafening barrage of shots seemed, for all intents and purposes, to be constant, coming from a dozen shooters at once. Bond must’ve known better than anyone in that moment that even if he used all his ammo he wouldn’t be able to mow down every one of his attackers – he was carrying a single gun (with as many rounds as he could carry) and a can of mace. His best bet (really, his _only_ bet) was putting distance between him and his pursuers, preferably avoiding lethal bullet wounds along the way.

“ _Am headed via back roads to city centre, expect more of an advantage in populous areas,”_ James huffed over their connection, _“Targets only suspect drug authority involvement.”_

Back behind the reinforced walls of headquarters, several individuals had abandoned their undertakings on orders from their supervisor and had begun to try to zero in on 007’s position, to ascertain the status of the affray in any way possible. The cursor on the monitor above them had reappeared and several breaths caught; Q’s eyes sparked alight as the point blinked to indicate Bond’s triangulated coordinates once again. James had long since learned not to belittle the radio transmitter.

“007 will need to lose all of them before he finds transit to Rio Branco,” Q thought aloud. The traders had traveled through the jungle but the highway was Bond’s only real way out.

At the quartermaster’s side, Tanner initiated a call on his mobile, collectedly negotiating flight arrangements to São Paolo, where James could collect papers to fly back across the Atlantic – “...If he gets to the plane,” Tanner qualified under his breath.

They heard the sharp, ragged curses torn from 007 as he ducked between industrial buildings, running on the ankle he’d sprained back in the jungle, definitely battered but possibly not shot. It was maddening, being able to hear Bond when _he_ couldn’t hear _them_.

“ _Fuck me, shit,”_ James growled. There was the sound of tires shrieking and glass breaking, followed by building shouts in more than one language. The piercing clink of ricocheting bullets assaulted Q’s ears, then his wide eyes watched as onscreen Bond’s position moved away from the street and into a block of warehouses. He was still being pursued but only the rare shot’s echo traveled through his microphone as his paces blasted him through building after building, knocking down countless impediments for the men at his heels as he went.

007 made sure to emerge from an odd side door, testing his luck that neither the Peruvians or the Brazilians had chosen that dark corridor to search for him. Q nearly breathed a gasp of relief as the pace of a stumbling sprint sped up over the line, as the agent made his way through the minute spaces between apartment complexes and commercial buildings – on the map, it looked as though he was passing through walls, slipping from their fingers like sand.

Bond was almost halfway to the northwest corner of town, zig-zagging up one street, over one with seemingly no one on his tail, when a grunt and resounding thud came from the speakers. “ _No,”_ Q breathed. The mic’s input translated into ear-splitting shrieks and scratches, punctuated by the nausea-inducing sounds of Bond being wrestled, heaving while being punched again and again, to the face and the gut. There was the unmistakable gasp of shock, the one that sounded like having a plea for mercy convulsively ripped from your lungs, of some bone or joint of James’ being bent far past its range of motion. Still, the agent had some sort of chips in the game – after all, he was still breathing.

In another beat a shot rang out over the speakers, deafeningly loud, with a pained yell to match; Q’s fingers lost their place on the keyboard and almost knocked the mouse clear of his desk. Metal clashed with a strident wail (guns? knives?) – an aggrieved shout came then, and although it wasn’t clear which man had formed the sounds they were loud enough that Bond’s general direction would be general information now, if not his exact position. The next second had both men huffing laboured breaths as they seemed to be struggling on the pavement, then the sudden aborted gasps of a man with a voice deeper than James, gurgling and choking for the tiniest dregs of oxygen.

Q ripped out the top drawer of his desk and yanked out the desk phone he never used, growling out, “Bugger, shit, fuck, fuck,” as he fumbled to untangle the cord. He beckoned at the interpreter, who remained in his periphery vision, chewing at her cuticles with vigor.

“Could you please–” He was cut off by her questioning look, nodded (‘ _Yes, you’_ ) and handed her the receiver.

They were distracted by the alarming sound of a stomp and a vague crunch, then the very clear expulsion of Bond’s mace – _Is this man made of_ steel _? How does he have any fight left?_ – could be heard over the airwaves.

Calling back the attention of the woman beside him, the quartermaster indicated a screen to the far right on which a shifting list of telephone numbers was displayed.

“These are the payphones nearest to the agent at any moment, can you start ringing them?” The database was jaw-droppingly shoddy and chances were slim, slim enough that Q couldn’t stop his restless foot from shaking the table. Bond had become the mark himself, wouldn’t survive the next 24 hours if many more entities were alerted of his presence.

At long last it seemed like Bond was cleared of that pursuer as his footfalls had begun again, although it seemed the rest were close behind and his own progress was weighed down by– “Agh, Christ, bloody fuckin' _pepper_ shite, can’t fucking see my own hands, Goddammit,” Bond cursed hoarsely, succeeded by a string of hacking coughs that would put any Victorian consumptive to shame. And that didn’t bode well, for all the stakes already piled against the agent. “Water, just find yourself water, 007,” Q murmured. And to think he sometimes considered James’ ears deaf in everyday scenarios.

Within moments they heard the promising splash of wet and Bond’s relieved huff of breath, and even before he was back en route, Q had turned to his captive assistant again.

Ms Fonseca looked remarkably transformed within seconds, all narrowed eyes and fierce conviction.

Q continued, “You’ll dial 0 then 55 to dial out and reach Brazil, then dial the number listed. No answer after two rings, move on. Ask anyone that answers what time it is – if they say it’s 11:23 give me the phone immediately. Oh, and the numbers onscreen will change every 90 seconds. Just... try as many as you can.” He returned to search for surveillance streams based in the city streets James was navigating. Sweat had begun to bead at his temple and along his palms; _If anyone even picks up,_ Q thought to the vaguely swayable nonexistent deity in his mind, _I swear to invite him in for a Scotch next time he follows me home from the park._

_If he gets back in one piece, I’ll fucking cut him a key._

Tanner ended the series of calls he’d been caught up in, heated glare on the back burner for a moment, and cleared his throat. He traced a finger over the map projected closest to him, motioning for Q to look. “He’ll need to double back if he has any chance of shaking them,” he said gruffly. “Can’t just take the quickest path to catch a bus, they’ll have armed men waiting in the undergrowth along the expressway to shoot any white man on sight. Get him to head south to the river along the border; it’s not shorter but it’ll give him an actual chance of survival.”

Q, too, had to clear his throat then. “Right,” he said, “How do I redirect an agent whose only way to communicate with us is through output?”

Tanner brought a hand up to cover his mouth, shaking his head as he closed his fist and drew away from the monitors. He made for the glass doors and held up a hand as if telling Q to wait – he’d be back as soon as he pulled a solution out of thin air – then used that same fist to knock open the door through which he stalked away.

The sound of Ms Fonseca’s frantic dialing and frustrated hang-ups promptly became background noise as Q detected a video stream along the perimeter of a private institution – probably a school – that intersected with 007’s current route.

“Hello, yes!” the lady cried, and Q’s breath caught. “Could you tell me what time it is?” She pushed the words out in a rush. Her face turned dark and impatient in the next instant; she immediately killed the call with a tap of her finger and pursed her lips, locking her eyes onto the new list of digits that was compiling before her eyes.

She had two more false positives within the next ten minutes, and her exhales were ragged with every hang-up. Q had pulled up the surveillance from the fenced-off school onscreen, as well as a nearby bank’s security camera feed that covered a cash machine along the same thoroughfare, but Bond was still about half a kilometre off from their range.

Over the speakers they could hear Bond fire off an errant shot, then no more for a while as his pelting footsteps brought him into view on the pixelated feeds above. The agent may not have been in his distinctive suit and tie, but his posture and gait were unmistakable. With a jolt, Q turned to see Ms Fonseca dialing rapidly – logically, he knew taking over the task wouldn’t make it go any faster, wouldn’t increase their chances of finding the right match, so like it or not, his decision was made: the instant he put his heart above the rest would be the one he welcomed failure.

Another phone call was picked up and Q nearly buckled over in desperation, able to see quite clearly it wasn’t 007 who had answered. _And why do you think it’ll ever happen, idiot?_ He knew quite well he was grasping at straws, so while he put his all into the alternatives his mind came up with – hacking into local traffic systems to signal Bond somehow, triggering a gas explosion in a commercial building, directing the local authorities to get involved – his conviction was that even as a long shot, the phone did indeed have a fighting chance at this point.

“Yes, hello?” Ms Fonseca’s heightened voice broke his concentration again. “Can you tell– Oh, em, he wants..” She stuttered and nearly dropped the handset in the urgency to pass it off to Q.

They couldn’t have possibly... _What is she doing_? He clamped the phone between his shoulder and ear, still typing away to find a way into the traffic control networks of the local area. The agent was somewhere between the sources of the two video feeds they’d tapped. “What–”

“–Cassiopeia, 11:23, Philippians,” Bond’s voice growled down the line, “Cosette, Sarajevo...”

“007,” Q greeted him. _Christ. Whoever almighty, you’ll do well to follow through, bastard._ “We’ve got eyes and ears on you. You’ll take the bus to Rio Branco and a chartered jet will take you to São Paolo at 21:35 hours. You need to make a sharp left when you reach the bank you’ve been approaching, follow the lane for under a kilometre, then head north against the river. Make your way onto a bus once you’re at the BR-317 highway, keeping clear of any vegetation or populated bus stops. Our intel says narcs are after three local groups – they’ll likely have spread the alarm to civilians alike.” If Bond was captured it went from salvageable disaster to irreversible international conflict; he’d be compromised immediately and no ransom they’d demand for an outed agent would be reasonable enough for SIS. “Don’t let them get a good look at your face, Bond–”

“Or my back,” the agent muttered.

“Keep us updated,” Q demanded, though it resembled a plea.

“Yeah. Going,” 007 responded, and from the other end came a clamor as the phone was dropped. A round of shots could be heard firing from both the speakers and the headset at Q’s ear until the line went dead, and the back-and-forth went on for ages, shots clanging off of cars, stucco, pavement, anything. Bond was gasping for breath but it didn’t sound like he’d been hurt in the fall-out, and the gunfire narrowed to a few precise final blows; with the sound of two men hitting the concrete his pace was at a sprint and he blurred just into the scope of the cash machine’s camera before veering down an unseen avenue again.

Ms Fonseca’s lips parted. “Was he... dripping?” She was eyeing the now-steady footage of the bank’s surroundings, and the pavement which held a light spatter of dark fluid where Bond had changed direction.

Bond’s raspy voice met their ears once more, “Five men on my tail... killing just makes more crop up. I’ve an arterial wound on my left arm – keeping pressure’s bloody difficult when these bastards won’t stop multiplying. Other’n that my lungs burn like hell but they should be easy to lose now the sun’s headed down.” The pace of his footsteps had slowed a bit, but only the occasional distant gunshot and string of curses followed; Q’s heart raced with the revelation Bond just _might_ not end up torn to pieces, mind and body, by a horde of multi-national drug traffickers, his remains left to the wild dogs of the Brazilian jungle.

Q ran to the glass doors and propped one open, seeking out the head of the Chief of Staff, whose nose was buried in a binder, his fingers tight around his mobile and his eyes sharp on the computer he’d commandeered from another employee. “Tanner!” Q called. “Put a medic on that plane.” _And I’ll prepare for the British Inquisition,_ he thought, though nothing could make him wary rather than pleased with this net result.


	4. Chapter 4

Well aware he wasn’t of the ‘sit down and talk it out’ school himself, Q wasn’t entirely sure as to why he’d been charged with Bond’s mental... whatever this was meant to be, considering his own questionable emotional stability (really, he wasn’t unstable in the least, it seemed, but he was nearly offended anyone thought they _knew_ that without investigating further).

Without giving himself a second longer to shake off this responsibility, he walked across the path to sit at Bond’s bench and silently put a napkin-wrapped spring roll by the other man’s fingers. The day was breathtaking, anyone could see that, but there was just enough of a breeze that the steaming warmth inside the pastry wouldn’t be unwelcome. James’ steely eyes remained affixed to the tulips and daffodils and crocuses that had cropped up around them in the past few weeks – this probably wasn’t how he would’ve liked _this_ to happen.

“Were you aware,” Q began, his voice low but crisp as the birdsongs around them, “that you killed four civilians in Peru?”

Bond still refused to take a bite or meet his gaze. “I’m not gracing that question with an answer.”

Q sighed in response, feeling more than slightly drained. It felt like a worse punishment every time they were forced out in the open; having nothing to do didn’t mean having nothing to worry about (quite the opposite, actually). The time passed with the ease of which, for a chain smoker, the seconds ticked away between cigarettes. Some mornings his skin felt ablaze with phantom urges to begin fragments of a work day routine, knowing the itch of being out of the office would only agitate him more once he came across Bond.

“I don’t know what to do with any of this, honestly.”

“Don’t do anything, Q,” the agent replied, drawling.

A pregnant silence weighed between them as Q picked away idly at his food.

“You won’t lose your job over this,” Bond said, but before Q could finish chewing (he wouldn’t rush, not even MI6 had the ability to ruin his lunch) the other man continued: “It was Brazil, not Peru, and you know that perfectly well, just as I know precisely how many innocent lives I’ve taken.”

“In your entire career?”

“It’s not bloody _over_ , though you wankers probably have champagne hoarded away for the day it is. Regardless of how it ends.”

“Now, there,” Q pointed with a clean fork before sifting through a pile of white rice. “What all do you think you mean, ‘ _you wankers’_ and all that? You already claim my job doesn’t depend on this – which, thank you _ever so_ for clearing up my singular greatest concern in life, glad _that’s_ off my radar – so why am I part of this army of tossers you’ve built up in your head? What all do I gain from making my partner cross with me by asking questions that, to most individuals, wouldn’t exactly merit a figurative gun to my head?”

“You’re spot-on as usual, Quartermaster. There is no benefit, there are no winners, so I recommend you take my file or whatever logs they passed on and shove it all. I’m fairly certain you’re past the rank where overtime pay rates come into the picture. Don’t waste any more time on this.”

Q nodded, adjusting his glasses on his nose and gathering the final bits of rice from his green curry. He swallowed and fiddled briefly with the sleeves of his coat – up then back down to where they started. “I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced it quite like...” he said, then quieted for a long time as if he hadn’t spoken at all.

He began again. “The experience of feeling powerless isn’t one I deal with well. As ties between” – _us_ – “you and MI6 were cut while you followed the traffickers, I could feel it become easier and easier for me to fall into caring too much to be useful, too much to efficiently manage my team and deliver in my role. I don’t mean that I became less capable of doing my job, simply that – well, if I had tripped up I’d’ve fallen off a very steep precipice, and quicker than gravity could try and pull me down.

“In the past, I don’t think you could call what I was a control freak as much as I created my own scenarios, my own power. I was... too private, I suppose. Boys lasted very little time getting in and out of my bed, less if they had a proclivity for talking. It’s so _fuck_ ing– it’s infuriating to want something from someone else and be resolutely blind to all the ways you don’t deserve them.”

Bond’s sharp eyes narrowed as his mouth closed around a bite of his spring roll, his hound-like nose elongated, but he didn’t make a move as if to speak, so Q went on.

“Treat someone like less than dirt but only see your expectations of them and you’ll be disappointed one hundred percent of the time, obviously. I had my own things going on – always had my own business going on and rarely let them take part in my actual _living_ of _life_ , so that when I consistently dismissed people as boring with ugly personalities and no brains worth mentioning, they were long past done with me. I didn’t have real friends to speak of then, no surprise, and though I consciously knew my family was full of shit, it didn’t occur to me my life was built around them, my failure to embrace relationships was their most influential gift to me.”

“What English boy isn’t a selfish little git?” Bond murmured.

“I suppose I didn’t get the selfish kicked out of me like a lot of others, though. Couldn’t cope – you know, or I viewed it as such – with my peers much... I think I’m still in the process of real world-ing myself bit by bit now.”

“Who was that who phoned you in March?”

Q laughed airily, turning his hips and legs on the bench to face James more fully. “It’s _May_ , 007.”

“I’m well aware.”

“I guess I can’t judge the absurdity of the observation when I can remember the call, too.”

“Go on, then.”

Q gave him a look as if he hated it was as easy as that for James to get the truth out of him, but he went on anyway: “I have this friend I’ve known since we went to college together, when I was a little less troubled and before I became an uppish twit. Simon. We didn’t speak for a long time after school but when he ended up working in the south again we met for drinks and still do from time to time, still chat late on the phone some nights. I... well, I wanted more from him at one point, asked him a couple of years ago if he wanted to be more serious about _us_ , and it so happened that he could only take me so seriously as to think I wanted us to shag on the regular...”

“So.”

“So that’s what we did. Do, on and off. I never outright told him I wanted to be exclusive, and have long since decided I don’t – not with him.”

James cocked an eyebrow. “I for one don’t usually look so put-off when I’m about to get off, not even when there’ll be blood on my hands afterwards.”

Painstakingly, Q folded his napkin, then snapped the the empty container closed and stuffed it back into the plastic bag by his side. He took his time with his reply. “I didn’t– I left because Simon’s part of my life, not yours, not MI6’s, and whether or not we had it off is none of your affair. The part of it I _am_ deciding to tell you is that he is who called, and he is who has shown me how much I have yet to learn about myself. Something I’m coming around to is that when I find myself caring even minutely about someone, I should probably pay attention to that, if not for their sake at least for mine.

“It’s very rare for me to express an interest in someone’s life, James, even now, and when I do manage there’s little chance I’m faking it. I am _here,” –_ Q poked his fork to indicate their bench – “not _there_ where my career is unthreatened and my personal life is locked up and your teeth can’t sink into whatever bones I throw your way. I’m at your mercy, James. I know full well this isn’t an eye for an eye, that your thoughts cost more than a penny... I don’t even know what I’m bloody trying for here.”

“All due respect, I advise you stop trying.”

“Christ, and I thought I didn’t listen. _This_ is one of those scenarios where I feel powerless, Bond. _'Respect_.' I doubt you have _any_ for me at all. I’ve got nothing, do you know that? Do you care about those lives? Too much? Not enough? Have you had no trouble sleeping since coming seconds away from death?”

Bond stood up. “Thank you for the amuse-bouche. You can have your spot to yourself.”

Q fumbled with a napkin, and his take away bag hit the ground as he stood. “No. What are you going to– No, keep listening, fine. Sit down. Promise to never say ‘amuse-bouche’ again and I won’t push again. Sit.”

“I am, alright?”

Q nodded in silence, rearranged his position on the bench and watched for a moment. “You asked why I choose here of all places to spend my time off.”

“Not recently, I didn’t.”

“I didn’t say recently.”

“I asked, yes.”

“Bond. Push my buttons like that and I’ll push right back, don’t think I won’t. I’m not the one who’s a man of his word.” Q pushed his glasses so they sat snugly upon the bridge of his nose. “I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for you, frankly; and worse, as lopsided as this arrangement is, somehow I feel like the one with a debt to pay.”

“So despite the elements–”

“That’s not true, now. Don’t act as though I put you through that unbearable January snowfall, all those godforsaken on and off flurries. Of _course_ , in reality I didn’t put you through any shifts in climate whatsoever, and funnily enough I actually haven’t forced you to do anything whatsoever since we’ve known each other, although I doubt your internal narrative sees things the same way.”

“‘Course not. Curious animal, me. Curiosity, you.”

His wits apparently abandoned, Q emitted a startled laugh. He met James’ cool eyes and as ever, his gaze was the first to fall. “I’d’ve never classified you for one who could make me laugh, James.”

“You’ve no explanation for your behaviour or your positioning, but you were here when the days were shortest and you’ll be here when they’re the longest.”

“I don’t suppose that quenches your thirst for answers.”

“Not in the least. How did you guess?”

“Do you ever stop being restless, Bond? Does it ever end with you? I’m wondering if it was foolish to ask how you sleep at night – I’m not asking again, mind – if only because I’ve got to assume you don’t actually sleep ever.”

“You’re _hardly_ one to talk, lad.”

“I will talk, I am talking. Shut me up, find a way. I’m the _best_ listener, James. You know that.”

Bond tilted his head as if stretching his neck, right and then left. He bent back with his eyes closed – the skin beneath them was plum-coloured but sallow and thin as silk – and his neck cracked alarmingly as he brought his chin to chest. His nostrils flared, and he reached up to press his fingertips to the wound at his eyebrow that had just begun to heal. His fingernails began to agitate the skin around the stitches, scratching over the same inflamed area as he breathed steadily through his nose.

Consciously stopping his hand from extending to where it wasn’t welcome, Q still felt his lips part with worry. “I’d rather you... not,” he said. Not _You shouldn’t_ or _Don’t do that_ or _The doctors said..._ or anything else. If he could take responsibility, he would. Everywhere else was where people would put on airs with 007 – Q couldn’t help that.

Bond’s fingers clenched as they withdrew into a fist, but they fell to his lap all the same. Sighing, he rotated the shoulder on the far side from Q, and it clicked in its socket as he seemed to be mentally smoothing over the urge to fuss with that injury as well.

“I do respect you, about as much as I am capable, Q,” James said, his voice low.

The quartermaster’s eyebrow lifted. “Oh.”

“Can’t have a proper working relationship without it and you’ve more than delivered on your side of things, seems to me.”

“More than?”

“Don’t suppose you’ve noticed I’m not remotely concerned with _everyone_ ’ _s_ safety, or _everyone’s_ life choices.”

A minute shiver overtook Q as the wind lifted the dead leaves along the pavement, causing the low-hanging nascent blossoms along the paths to sway. “Have you ever ‘concerned’ yourself with reading my personnel file, Bond? I can’t imagine you’ve never been curious as to my qualifications. I can’t even imagine you let 24 hours pass before you checked my background, honestly.”

“You’re right and wrong, Q,” Bond responded – and the way his tongue furled to form the sound, lips closing around the name like a secret, was intoxicating. “I read the first page. You are in fact of age, it seems, despite what all my instincts told me. You can’t have expected me to hold out and miss sketching the quaint portrait in my head – known relations, educational background, favorite films, hobbies, vices, etc.”

“I didn’t expect you to hold out, I expected you’d read it all. And don’t pretend the mundane details are in there; MI6 couldn’t give less of a shit about what _I_ do on my own time. You, on the other hand.” If James was to be believed, Q had been the preoccupied one. Within hours of meeting Bond he’d read every word nestled between the covers of the, “ _Bond, J._ ” folder twice over.

Q continued before the agent could get a word in edgewise. “So what’s my given name, then? What’s my criminal record look like?”

“Couldn’t tell you.” Meanwhile, James Bond had been his name since birth, and officially he only had minor infractions, all on foreign soil.

“Like hell.”

“I stopped reading, Q. I don’t know what you’ve done any more than I know what you’re going to do. Believe what you want.”

“At ten I spent half a year in a stranger’s house when my mum was deemed unfit to raise me in our disgusting pit of a home. Boosted half my friends’ A-level results, but you know that. You also know I’ve changed names more than once, that I’m functionally blind without my glasses, and that I’ve only ever travelled to the Continent twice.”

“Q...”

“I was on the edge of being so far on her Majesty’s bad side that I’d be unredeemable when I joined SIS, as you know. When I was 19 I nearly cost a uni friend her life when we couldn’t pay this dealer even half of what we owed. Haven’t paid the full taxes I’ve owed since the day I graduated. I’ve accessed encrypted files and confidential information that would make even moguls and heads of state piss blood in fear of me. I know full well what can be done with machines like computers, with the Internet – it’s just now I know the person in this position has the intellect and intention to work against those modern evils. I’ve hacked as many intranets for business as I have for pleasure, but you know that as well. It’s just _alright_ now, given my job title.

“I read yours, back to front, Bond. You’re not _concerned_ with that? You don’t want your fair share?”

“Fairness is built on delusion. I don’t have to tell you that.” Bond’s lips were chapped to the point that deep pink cracks sank into them.

“I read every _word_ , James.”

“I’m an open book.”

“You most certainly are not. That didn’t give me _anything_ on you.”

“Much as I suspect if I had perused further, I still wouldn’t have _anything_ on you.”

“Do you want to?”

“I can have whatever there is to know about anyone against their will, and I’ve helped myself a thousand times. At present I’m not interested in taking what’s not mine; you should be grateful.”

 _You’ve no qualms taking lives that aren’t yours to end,_ Q thought. _But then, if not you, would I rather it was someone else?_ In the scheme of things, would he rather James took an oath of non-violence as the spy's current targets warred on?

“I’ve always wondered,” Q mused, “how many people James Bond has slept with.”

“In my entire _career_ , I presume?” Bond craned his neck and eyed his partner with a gaze like he was summing something up, but whether it was that which was before him or something outside of plain view Q couldn’t tell.

“I don’t remotely know the answer to that,” James said finally.

“You knew that as soon as I’d asked,” Q responded.

“Perhaps I did.”

“When do you think,” Q wondered, “was the last time you slept with someone because you wanted to?”

James’ eyes flickered as he smiled languidly. “Not that long ago – an hour or so after I was released from the doctors, I think. Within the last 24, then.”

“Right. This _is_ the same man we’ve been talking about all along.”

“To be fair, it wasn’t who I wanted.”

In a split-second of an exhale Q thought back to oaths that had run through his mind days earlier; in that moment he felt he’d lost hold of the reins permanently, though, and now he felt the inherent transience of power. He could take control back, and he wanted to. He knew he truly wasn’t a man of his word, though, and probably never would be.

Well, he wouldn’t be cutting James a _key_ just yet.


	5. Chapter 5

_Why can’t we see that when we bleed we bleed the same?_

_I can’t get it right since I met you._

Q starts the engine before Bond has time to get both feet in the car. He shifts into reverse, consciously ignores James in his peripheral the whole time he’s jerkily navigating out of the line of parked cars and away from the loading bay of MI6.

He doesn’t speak until they’re on the motorway. The moon is near-full and gives his face a faint golden glow, interrupted only by the occasional pair of headlights scattering harsh light amongst the mirrors and windows of the car. “Turn off your mobile,” he says.

“It’s off,” James replies, then his strained breathing is once again the loudest thing to be heard for seconds, minutes.

"James, I can let you disappear. It's all there; I have the skills and the access to make it happen."

To his left, the man is trying to cover up his attempts to regulate his breathing. Beneath his leather coat, James’ right hand is shifting over the space where his heart sits, then slowly, minutely, it slips down to clutch at his lung, kneading as if trying to free up room inside the cavities inside.

Q indicates for about three minutes before changing into the inside lane, though there’s no other drivers around to take notice of his signals or movements. If James wanted to complain about how his car was being driven, maybe he would keep himself in a suitable condition to be able to drive it at all times. It's not as though Q has ever desired the responsibility of handling the 2014 Rapide on London's cobbled streets and cutthroat motorways, much less the supposed wordly knowledge that so much horsepower could make him privy to. Q continues speaking. "Unless someone as intelligent as me comes along in the next five, ten years and goes digging, no one will know."

"You say things like that purely to flatter yourself, you know that don't you?”

James sighs, and it’s so ragged it does something unsavory to Q’s own insides. He goes on: “Q, we've not been secret. I'm not sure what value they place on me alive these days, but I assure you they won't want me out there knowing what I know if there's the slightest possibility I'm not dead. And what of you? If I'm 'dead' and living on some beach they don't have the resources to comb and you're here – I don't see you again, is that it?

“You don't fly, couldn't even visit. You know I couldn't stay in London – couldn't even stay in the EU undetected, really. Even if you figure out a non-lethal way to back out of MI6 – which by all means tell me if you do, I’ll give you a list of more souls to save – the suspicions raised when our departures are timed so fortuitously close to one another would have a pack of the Queen's best hounds breathing down our necks immediately.”

“And who better to throw off their scent than yours truly?” There’s a fire in Q’s gaze that only continues to grow.

“That's not how they operate, Q. Being enemies of the state, of an entire system of espionage, we can't make them give up by making the manhunt a little more difficult. And you have... liabilities. It doesn’t help matters.”

Q’s head twitches, but not far enough for his eyes to leave the road. “Excuse me? I'm sorry we can't all be unattached like you. I’m sorry I didn’t fucking plan out my life to be the perfect ‘orphan’ for recruiting, you callous fuck.”

“Shut it.” James goes rigid and silent, his jaw strung tight and posture turned inward. He says nothing for so long that Q has more than enough time to sift through any justifications for his own behaviour and reach the reluctant conclusion he’s massively cocked this up.

“Don’t speak to me–” Q breaks himself off with a huff, growls indistinctly and then bites hard on his top lip. His eyes flicker over the roadway. “Wait,” he says, commanding softly.

“Yes. Take your time,” James spits. And he’s massaging his forehead into the cool glass window now, his breath flowing in willowy flames up the glass.

It’s not until Q’s backed them into James’ parking block, cut off the ignition, and let the engine’s hum fade to silence that he says another word. “James,” he whispers, unbuckles and turns in his seat. His eyes flicker up finally, fighting the weight of guilt that makes it monumentally difficult to meet James’.

“Love,” he says, “I apologise. Truly.”

James still hasn’t faced him fully, which is well within his rights. “That was much more than I expected.” He can’t mean the apology.

Q squeezes his eyes shut. “I don’t know what to expect from myself, really.”

“Can’t think your way out of this one.”

“That bit’s frighteningly clearer all the time. James...”

“Say what you need to.” His head rests propped up by his hand by the car window, his breath steady but still so much _louder_ than normal.

“You were minutes from never coming back, James. I– well, you know all this. None of this needs saying. But it doesn’t matter anymore, it’s not good enough that _you’re_ all right with the present circumstances, that you’ve come to terms with what will – _will_ , do you hear me? – occur if you continue like this. They could’ve known, they _might well have_ known what those Czechs had waiting for you–”

“They suspected, I imagine.”

“James, I didn’t even know what country you'd been in until yesterday, when I received that blasted phone call from some nurse after I’d already left MI6 and squared my fucking missions away. You had one agent down and no choice as to whether you would carry on or not – and to be fucking honest, I think we both know given the decision you’d still choose to go in alone rather than forfeit, let’s remove any bullshit denials from the equation here – and you accomplished your goal, bravo, but at what cost, yeah? Do you see my concerns here? Even aside from the Zyklon B, the external injuries, the long-term effects of exposure that I am afraid to even contemplate, much less discover… For Christ’s sake, this is the twenty-first century and you were _gassed_ ; there are preventative measures that could’ve been taken, but instead you were left to go out like a light, now we’re watching for” – he gestures towards some paperwork in the backseat – “‘aberrations in consciousness and nerve responses, irregularities in breathing, drops in blood pressure or heart rate,’ Heaven knows what else I’m forgetting.

“In the scenario where I had three other agents’ lives in my hands, they took away my right to know that you were hurt, that you were possibly dying, that you were here and barely alive. I hope, and I hate, that I would never have dropped those agents had I known, but it destroys me to think that you could’ve stopped breathing right then, without my knowledge, mere miles from where I stood unaware of a single complication. The minute they take away a choice like that from me, James, there is no going back. You were _nothing_ to them in those moments, James, an unfortunate loss to pay reparations for at a later date maybe. And that’s so woefully misjudged it makes everything inside me ache. You are _everything_. I almost– oh, love, if you weren’t what you are to me I might desire SIS face a reckoning like none they’ve ever seen before. As it is, I don’t think I will trust myself to go back and serve this institution for much longer, and perhaps saying this is my ruin, perhaps it’s the breaking point between you and I, but I trust you’ll stop the bad I’m tempted to do, and I know you wouldn’t betray me in my departure. You know I wouldn’t want a single thing to happen to you because of me, yet still you’d take it, mm? Shoulder every blow. God, what have we stepped into?

“I think we’ve earned our leave, James,” Q says after some time, somber and delicate, “and I’m desperately nervous that you’re not in agreement.”

James exhales through his nose, eyes shutting deliriously as he summons the words he needs in this moment: "I want nothing less than for you to be rid of MI6 at the earliest possible date. It seems... unnecessary, at this point, to ask if you're sure, if there's not a way you could continue on as quartermaster without feeling as though your integrity is compromised."

"My integrity! My _heart_ , James, my God, my health, my nerves – and you, too, Jesus. If we" – his breath catches, clicks clumsily in his throat as he chokes on the onslaught of images in his head – "if you survive through Friday... You're absolutely correct, there is no question in my mind, love. And, um, if you differ then I... fuck, you know what I'm fruitlessly trying to get out, I assume."

"You need to leave regardless." His voice sounds as if he's swallowed shards of glass.

" _James_."

"Fancy you're going to manage it without a hitch, I imagine."

"I don't. Alright–" Tortured by the distance implemented by the center console, Q brings his own fist up to his lips until his breathing evens out. "You know, please don't tell me what you want now. I want us, and if I'm working against a natural or an artificial hourglass – or both, why the hell not? – then I am being selfish tonight and asking that you please keep your answer to yourself.

"James, do–" Q's head snaps to his left now properly, he runs his gaze over the man beside him hungry to ensure every part of him is accounted for. His heart skips a beat and then, as if he can send the action into the past – it's what decidedly should've happened first – with a hand on the console Q leans into James' space tentatively. He breathes in the warm air mingling between their faces, grips at the torso that's been drawn up tight and far away from him for far too long, delicately pulls until James straightens with a grunt and grimaces a real smile, his eyes locked and deadset on Q's.

"'M such a twat," Q murmurs, his lips tight as he flicks mentally over the past 24 hours, at how many things they've said and done since he was called to the hospital wing – words and acts that could've been their last.

"I'm here still," James says. It doesn't matter that he's probably trying very hard to keep his voice clean and level, only that it's working on them both.

Q licks into James' mouth, nipping insatiably at his upper lip and fumbling with the hair at the back of his neck with clumsy fingers. James has a firm hand palming the curve of Q's shoulder blade, massaging in small deep circles he wants to last forever. One of them moans quite low, near-purring with soft-spoken devotion.

"Do you think," Q pushes the words from his lips, scoots back slightly to relieve any weight he might've put on James. "Would life without 007 be enough, James?"

"We'd make it enough, wouldn't we? You might be able to guess I've got no designs to live at a desk or become a fucking _hobbyist_ , Q, but there are other things. I am this man and SIS is not an irrevocable part of that. Or… I’m marginally hopeful that’s the case."

"The agent and the man are not one in the same, then?"

"Hardly. The agent hazards it all and stands to lose everything each and every day. You and I stand to gain everything."

Q shifts, burying a hand in the hair at the crown of his head. “Somehow I doubt you’ll find that same release when you’ve left the service.”

James sighs, smiles ruefully. “You’ve aligned yourself with someone who does thrillseek,” he admits. It appears he’s accidentally got his shoulder stuck in a shrug that’s too painful to release himself from. “We will– rather, _you_ will need to speak now, or soon, or… Well, what I mean to say is it will be a very different matter if you decide to take a prolonged leave of absence and decide to do so separate from my course of action.”

“That’s not happening, James.”

The man just clears his throat, a hand lifted to massage around his collar, the base of his neck. “I won’t give you your answer tonight; you may as well take your own time to deliberate.”

“I don’t need it.”

“Then let me tell you this, and let me know if I’m not being clear: I value life, Q, value life with you more than I truly understand or express. However. Dying due to my own risks taken is preferable to dying for Military Intelligence in my mind, and… dying having lived according to my wants and needs is preferable to trying to live forever.”

Q huffs out a laugh, a little bitter, a little sad. “You mean you haven’t even been _try_ ing thus far?”

“Have you even been listening?”

“Have _you_ , Bond?”

“Really, _really_ mull it over, Q.”

“You know my answer, James. I want you, special agent or not, you and your ‘wants and needs’ and the desirable bits – but the undesirable ones just as much. Please, just… think long and hard, James.”

_When will this loneliness be over?_


	6. Chapter 6

James picks up on the last ring – knowing full well Q _could_ be tapping into his surveillance at will, his gratitude extends as far as digging around to answer the mobile before any fingernails can be bitten.

“‘Afternoon, you sap.” _Sentimental arse of a lovefool_.

“Oh–” Q’s voice cuts off like he’s choked on his own voice, but he’s not gone for long: “Christ, the sound of your voice.”

“Mm.”

“Good morning, just barely.”

“I won’t apologise for your choice to be awake. I do expect my quartermaster to shut his eyes at some point in the week until I’m returned, if it’s not too much to ask.”

“Always too much.”

“ _I’ll sleep when I’m dead_ ,” James parrots, but his heart’s not in it and it’s better that way; he doesn’t want Q to leave the conversation wrapped up in that echo.

“How did we get to this place?” Q sighs down the line.

“Clearly, you mustered all the understanding you could garrison inside that already replete mind, I gathered up the wealth of patience and tolerance I’d built up over the handful of decades more I’ve been alive–”

Q clears his throat but sickeningly, perfectly, it doesn’t sound the least bit like irritation.

“And our combined success at not murdering each other somehow spread to preventing others from killing either of us, as well.” James sounds proud, uncharacteristically so.

There is a pause. “I meant it, more, in a ‘how did you cleverly devise my not killing you, my then falling into bed with you, my becoming overly attached with no conceivable good reason, my still not killing you, my mindboggling lack of hysteria in response to said past and present events...’ kind of way.”

“All due respect, I think I answered that query, Q.”

“See, I just don’t think you’ve noted the resentful tone I was going for.”

“Ought to work on that, I suppose, pillock. It's alright, not all of us are born thespians.”

“Fuck you.”

“Mm.”

“Thank you for not taking any bullets today, James. Or worse, going MIA.”

“I try to make a habit of the first one, at least.”

“We’re working on it,” Q replies, and James can practically hear his thoughts race over the potential in the idea of _missing_.

“Say you’ll make a pleasant day of it, Q.”

“I’ll work on it.” He can pick up on a little bit of a bite there in Q's voice, only just.

“Shit,” he breathes. “A year of that pain in the ass bench.”

“More than a year.” Q’s a question in his voice.

“Bench, singular, dearest. One year today of that and of other things.”

“What are you doing when I hang up on you in about three seconds to grab some shut eye?”

“You won’t,” he commands. “Else I’ll keep ringing back until you answer so that I can hear that charming laboured breathing begin. Afterwards, probably wank myself raw to this phone call. This evening, duty awaits.”

“Tell me you’ll be safe.”

“My heart is. As is my prick.”

Q sighs, not deigning that with a response. “Tell me you’ll be back.”

“Of course.” There can be no other response to that.

“Don’t lie. Tell me you’re in love with me.”

“Foolishly, even more after getting better acquainted.”

Q huffs out a snort of a laugh, exhaustion dripping off his words. “Oh, is that what they call it these days?”

“Good morning, Q. To sleep, already.”

“Perchance to dream.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seeing as I’ve seemingly reached the end of the Internet with this venture, I can only say I’m 95% sure the name Macun is pronounced “Maa-kyūN” – was strongly tempted to use the Irish name Maculine, meaning “child of Flann, spotted,” but couldn’t give myself a good enough reason for a name that has apparently never been used in real life before. Quillam is pronounced “kwIHL-ahM” and both names are English.

The thing about Q getting into bed with 007 is this: his sex drive has even James on edge most of the time. That’s not to say their sex life had gone from 0 to 60 the evening James first cornered Q in his own apartment, it’s just an unknown variable and seems destined to remain that way. Even when they’re occupied, when work has to be the first and only priority, the spark doesn’t dim completely. Even when Bond returns and can’t dissociate right away, or when Q can’t even be coaxed away from his laptop with the promise of a spine-tingling rimjob, or when either of them simply _doesn’t want sex_ , they still want each other.

So even the night when Bond had gotten restless (as he does, often) and crisscrossed London to gather the materials to put on a complete evening of Turkish backgammon and the Turkish coffee ceremony, even when they’d just been sitting, talking, battling in a war of wits until four in the morning, the pull between the two of them was still fierce, the looks shared between them hungry with a fire not entirely distinct from the ones kindled by their physical attraction.

The feeling of enjoying company is unfamiliar to both men: one because he actively avoids it almost instinctively, has rarely sought out a familiar face for the sake of it, and the other because he has never much liked the company he made, hence the feeling much more akin to tolerance Q had become accustomed to in his relationships. Rarely had the sex been good enough that he spent more than a couple months with a person before the costs seemed to outweigh the benefits.

At headquarters, outside of headquarters, on the same couch, in different hemispheres... the heat remains. It never turns off, not really. Often when Moneypenny is holding court with them outside M’s office, waiting for Tanner or Mallory to become available, she’ll walk off in the middle of a stunted attempt at small talk (knowing they haven’t absorbed a word) and go get herself a fresh cup of tea, leaving the two men to continue holding each other’s scalding gaze.

When things were good, they were James on the daybed for breakfast good, they were rounds of toe-curling phone sex before black tie functions that Bond had to attend in Stockholm and Dubai and Sydney good, they were Q being dragged away from the boys on the dance floor and into the first taxi in sight good, they were Q’s come slipping hot and thick down the space between James’ thighs because they hadn’t had condoms in the living room good.

Good was just as real when Q would work far too late and stumble to his bed in the dark, heave all his body weight to drape across James and concentrate wholly on the converse movements of skin on skin, the dip and rise of inhales and exhales that didn’t feel fragile, didn’t feel uncomfortable, didn’t feel like waiting for the other shoe to drop. It tasted like the sorbet Q forced past James’ lips on the dreary, overcast ‘first day of summer’; smelled like the agent’s bedsheets once the cleaners had been through after an extended absence; sounded like Q murmuring incessantly to himself as his fingers pattered across a keyboard; felt like James’ heartbeat beating against his lover’s fingertips as they sat next to each other on Q’s rug with twin pairs of MDMA tablets in their palms – neither one had done this with someone he trusted enough to let his guard down... ever, really. Good looked like the unwavering gaze that met Q’s eyes when he told Bond to bring back his equipment in one piece; the statement was threatening in a different way now.

Good was James taking Q for his first ever English countryside car trip when they had five days off, then patiently buying the younger man ginger ale from the shop at which they’d stopped while Q lost his lunch in the toilets. It was James telling Q he didn’t know how not to be his own worst enemy, telling Q it was unlikely he’d ever willingly spent so much time with another human being before, telling Q anything he asked because it was so much more difficult to convince himself into distrusting for once.

And bad, bad was not nearly as bad as it should have been, perhaps, for how mammoth their personalities were. Bad was walking out of dinners during their time off because Bond had come back a condescending brick wall and Q not caring that James would be no more than a kilometre away at most until he decided he was ready to give the other a chance to apologise. Bad was wanting to fuck each other without a rubber just _once_ and both men resenting James for his doing so with the occasional mark. Bad was the weight in their eye contact and touches and words that brought them to the same park benches even when they were the feuding lovers who exchanged all of ten words each day back inside MI6.

Bad was the day James was furious with Q for keeping quiet about the one death threat he’d received several months back during a now-resolved arms dealing case – he had forced Q to listen to all the ways that could’ve gone so very badly, and only when he’d exhausted himself shouting did he realize how shallow Q’s breathing had become from his place still seated on the couch; Q had slumped against the armrest and closed his eyes as if centering himself, as if refusing to allow Bond to witness whatever was going on behind his eyelids. James had paced the flat and then the entire block several times, letting his frustration and adrenaline sink into the planes of the sidewalk before returning upstairs and waiting for Q to open back up and come to bury his face in James’ chest.

Bad was wanting so many of the same things and floundering on the unfamiliar paths to get there. Bad was remembering the good and knowing there was no reason to jeopardise it when the bad just didn’t take hold very well.

A muggy evening in late July finds Q drifting as he lays in his flat’s bath, door nearly shut and the sharp sweet smell of burning sage heavy in the air as it wafts from atop a ceramic dish sitting on the closed toilet. The room is built for one, cramped with none of those domestic wastes of space like James’ double sinks, but it still gives off hints of indulgence: black slate walls and floors, steel fixtures, and a shower ‘system’ – not just a showerhead. The man owns a rack for using electronics over top of the bath water (or reading books, as novel a concept as that feels), but his fingers have been giving him trouble all week, and he’s already sleeping with a wrist brace, so maybe just this once he won’t aggravate an already festering issue.

The air is deliciously thick with humid, rich smoke and fog, so that each breath feels like a rush different from the one before. His glasses, useless in here, sit next to the basin of the sink, just barely within reach. Last he checked Bond should’ve returned from Tehran two hours ago. They would debrief tomorrow morning; headquarters is mostly empty by now.

Sure enough, the front door of the flat clicks closed with a quiet rooted in considerateness, not stealth – when 007 doesn’t want to be heard, he is not heard. James walks in and emits a slight huff at the overpowering steam of sage in the air; he’s in his briefs, working his way through the buttons of a powder blue dress shirt. James nudges the door back where it was with his heel and seats himself on the edge of the porcelain. He throws his shirt to a corner of the floor before leaning in, balancing his weight on the opposite edge of the tub – Q meets him halfway and their kiss is long, breathless reunion. At some point in the past months it became more important to express _this_ before anything else.

This close, James smells of clean sweat and gin and taxicab. In the damp space between their lips, he murmurs to Q, “I’m fairly certain my generation’s supposed to do this sort of thing.” The man tilts his head towards where a plume of smoke continues to rise gently from the herb, twined into a loose sheaf.

“I’m afraid my generation doesn’t like to play by your generation’s rules, James,” Q says, tipping his head back to be cradled by the rim of the bath once again. James smirks, pulls himself back to his feet and ambles over to the towel rail. He grabs a plush towel and throws it, still folded, to the floor where the bathmat lies. James kneels and bends over the edge, making himself comfortable before beginning to cover Q’s buzzing skin with his touch: arms, neck, ribs, calves, outer thighs, stomach, inner thighs, forehead. He then trails down the slippery skin of Q’s front until curling his fingers lightly around his lover’s half-hard cock, tugging thoughtfully as he watches the younger man’s eyes flicker to the ceiling then, hazily, back to him.

“Can’t get it up for me, old man?” Q’s lips barely part around the softspoken taunt. “I knew I was right to be worried that prick would wear you out.” His eyes fall closed, but the mention of another man doesn’t make him lose the slightest interest, not like it used to in the beginning.

“There is _nothing_ ,” James says, taking his sweet time running his thumb around and around the head of Q’s aching cock, “I cannot do.”

Q puffs out a laugh and begins to rock his hips just barely, displacing little waves of steaming water as he pushes for a little more. The tub has a barely-there rough covering to its floor, giving one’s skin just enough traction for maneuvers like this.

“Have you no shame, driving those lines into the ground, Bond?”

James _hums_ , of all things. “I’ll stop using them when they stop working,” he drawls, “ _Quillam_.”

~

Weeks past, Bond had refused to stop giving Q inopportune erections at the office until he came out and revealed his given name – Bond _could_ get his hands on it within an hour, but that wasn’t the point of any of this, was it? After all, the scales were already tipped in Q’s favour. His own lover seemed to be the only individual on the planet whose privacy meant anything to agent 007.

Q had stubbornly held firm until one late evening when James was already mostly asleep. With his pinkie finger tracing the taut scars on Bond’s shoulder, he’d huffed the end of a train of thought aloud: “Why does it matter?”

“Th’ fuck you on about?”

“My name, why does it bother you?”

“It doesn’t. Even if I knew it, I highly doubt it would. Is it Mallory, is that why you’re so tight-lipped?”

“Like hell it doesn’t, you’ve been making work impossible for weeks.”

“...And do you really believe I would try to turn you on _less_ if I knew your Christian name?”

“You might do, for my sanity’s sake.” He’d paused, shifting. “It’s– just... I’d rather you call me something I like, rather than... Well alright, my mother gave me the name Crispin – family name, that, means ‘curly-haired’ – but she called me by my dad’s name just as often, so it’s not like I grew fond of it or anything. Gran used to call me Macun, when I lived with her. That one means ‘maker,’ essentially, which was fitting especially in my late teens. She was an attentive woman, in her way. In school my friends had different names for each other every other week, and everyone else called me by my surname–”

“Which is?”

“Nichols. MI6 knows that, but they also know I’ve cut ties with my erstwhile relations. That’s why all my post is addressed to Smith, as you know full well from going through it when you think I’m absorbed in my side projects.”

“Do you think you’ll ever entrust me with every one of your numerous aliases with which you could carry out the financial collapse of the G-20 overnight?”

Q hadn’t wanted to say he trusted James now and whatever he asked, he’d receive – even if it took a few weeks to work up to it.

“I’ve always liked the name Quillam, myself,” James had spoken again. “ _Resolute protector_.”

“Is this you recognising how many times I’ve saved your arse, James?”

“May I call you that when we’re not out there, sometimes?” he’d murmured, moving on as if he hadn’t heard. That was a yes.

“Why, though?”

“Couldn’t tell you. Otherwise it feels like you’d rather stay Smith to me, I suppose.”

“Alright.”

Minutes had elapsed in silence before James had spoken again. “I won’t use it against you, you know.”

“I do.” And that was easily the scariest bit of it all.

~

“Do you know what James means?” Q asks as the skin draped over his abs hikes and jumps, as his pulse speeds up and requires that he pant unevenly, brokenly.

“ _Best shag on Earth?_ ” Bond replies, and the motion of his wrist teases the head of Q’s cock with a sensual drag that says he knows he could do it precisely, calculatedly get his lover off in a heartbeat, but he won’t.

The water trickles loudly as Q’s far hand emerges from the warm surface, and he motions with a finger for James to bring his face closer. Q arches his back into a wet kiss and it’s tender until James sucks on his tongue and refuses to let go, draws away down its length slowly while mirroring the same pace with the pull of his wrist. His eyes flicker open, bright and clear, and he dives in again to recommence their ardent exchange of steaming breath. The sound of the rough burn of heat through his nostrils fills Q’s senses, pinpoints his focus.

James breaks away, adjusts his knees on the towel, and quietly smirks at Q. The pace of his movement is more rapid now, with less room to think. James’ hair is mussed, only half his mouth is lifted, and his eyes are fierce but fogged with dark want. “Means _he who supplants,_ ” James says, each syllable crystal clear.

“Supplants whom, do you think?” Were it autumn, Q might have suggested the 'old dog' was the one being usurped by Q himself and his new tricks, not to mention any 00 is at risk of being supplanted by machines, literal killing machines. But that wasn’t a topic he’d entertain in the figurative bedroom; _then_ he would surely lose interest in a flash.

“Mm. Myself, more often than not. Wouldn’t you agree?” Q’s hips jerk beyond his control, jerk separate from his head which is also nodding yes, nodding _yes and I’m grateful for your ‘resurrections’ because I wouldn’t remember how to breathe if you didn’t come back to life._

“Ah, shit, _James,”_ Q grunts, ignoring considerateness and pulling the back of James’ head towards him in a wet grip. “Do _something_ , bloody–” he groans, bites unapologetically at James’ jaw, his top lip, his tongue. James growls right back, so hot and feral Q almost hiccoughs with surprise. The older man raises up higher on his knees and Q can just barely perceive his other hand occupying itself otherwise in the space between Bond’s legs.

Amidst the steam and the smoke and the blurred vision, that picture is as sharp as 20/20 now that Q’s looking for it – “How in God's name did you get lube in _my_ bathroom?”

“Had it in here for weeks.” James’ own breath hitches and his hips start rolling backwards so that his gaze is hot as sin on Q and on the slide of Q’s cock through his fist, but his attention is obviously being tugged at by the ministrations of his other hand. His lips begin to lose purchase on Q’s – which is hot in its own right to the man in the bath, knowing he’s losing to the fantasy of himself that has been pent up in Bond’s veins since he left for Iran three days ago.

“Come fuck me,” James urges, breathing at Q’s ear before kissing wetly and nipping at the sensitive spot where Q’s neck curves into his shoulder.

“Why don’t you come in here and fuck yourself?” Q grins lazily, though he knows with the way his teeth are planted in his lip he’s not kidding either of them, playing unfazed. Bond chuckles – it’s so rich and deep, this time Q’s lungs feel thick not with the haze of the air but with rapture.

“I have a doctor’s note and a birth certificate that say that’s a very bad idea,” Bond replies. It’s serious, yes, but not every reality check has to make things between them somber. His hand is still doing apparently _marvelous_ things up his arse, after all – his mood can’t really be dampened _too_ much.

“Since when have you been ruled by _documentation_ and _facts_ , Bond?”

“Since I decided I want you inside me tonight, but I also want that to be a possibility on future occasions as well.” With that he stands up, brushes his wet arms loosely on a spare towel, and makes to head out, still in his _snug_ briefs. “Four days and three nights without even a wank, Q. Your wish was my command...” he says, hand on the doorknob. “Least you could do is bugger me.”

Q huffs his impatience and looks on mournfully as the door to the bathroom is left wide open, as he watches the curling wisps of steam escape into the next room.

“You’re not earning yourself any points, Bond,” he calls, cognizant of every muted noise that meets his ears.

“Terribly sorry, it’s just a little difficult embracing the heat after extended exposure to the crisp 40-degree averages of the capital.”

Q hauls up an inhale and lifts his body from the water before the haze can suck him down again. The slate of the wall wants for his touch, clings to the imperfections of his wrinkled skin and cracked fingernails. He thinks, as the water begins to suckle and gargle while circling the porcelain drain, he ought to be a generous lover, to take every taut bowstring of James’ musculature and release each one before they go in any other direction. Then just as sudden it’s not a facetious musing, it’s what he does want. Does want to be for this partner of his.

It’s almost certainly their longest-running point of contention, this ever-persistent drive to provide to the point of exhaustion.

“Moot point, really,” Q mutters as he pats his skin dry lightly. _Couldn't be a more self-sufficient pair if we tried._

“Pardon?”

“Getting big-headed, that’s all.”

Bond trains his tired eyes on his lover through the window of his spread, bowed legs. “Come here already,” he says. “Be mine now.”

“Impatient bastard. When am I not?”

James’ laugh is a dry chuckle, rasping paper-thin from between his lips, but his voice is just the side of demanding where it becomes vulnerable and contains more of a question in the tone than 007’s _ever_ holds. “Far too often, that’s when.”

He hasn’t bothered with the dressing gown he’d been in since nightfall. James hasn’t bothered with the curtains.

“Did you buy my size?” Q asks, bringing a hand around his lover’s head and breaching his lips with soft, slippery tongue.

“Duty free,” Bond replies. Down the headboard he slides, the curve of his spine cradled by a down pillow rather than the paneled headboard.

“Do you know, sometimes I worry you think you’re funny. Keeps me up at night.” All the while he settles into a straddling position over James’ upper thighs, removing the space between. Absentmindedly his fingers rub and soothe the dusty hair beneath James’ navel, working over the skin there as if it were what he’s been waiting for most these past few days. His cock strains for attention just out of reach of Q’s stroking, but for all he must be painfully, heartracingly hard, James knows to save his huffing and puffing for later. It’ll only delay what he wants now.

James can’t stop his fidgeting, though, the restless exertion of energy in his legs, in his persistent tease at Q’s arse. In seconds the man scoots backwards and his rear is perched up high in the air, bare and irresistible but out of James’ reach. Hands gripping sheets, Q suckles at James’ waistline, the supple flesh there sensitive enough to make his partner hold his breath, shivering with the over-stimulation. He lets up on the tease and comes up to lave his tongue over James’ breastbone, then clavicle, up to the line of his neck and nosing at his hairline with patient reverence. Bond’s fingers, in turn, wander featherlight over Q’s now-cool skin, tantalizingly closing in on his perineum – Q’s back bows with the buzz of anticipation, and with a sharp exhale he draws himself up straight. His eyes graze over the body of the man pinned (only not, exactly) by his hips – he’s starving, salivating to lavish attention over Bond’s every square inch.

The man in question grunts roughly, and when Q remains wholly concerned with regions south of his face, repeats a gruff entreaty: “A-hem.”

“What can I do for you, sir?” Q shuffles his knees backwards, strains to reach the pack of rubbers James left on the coverlet.

James emits a laugh through his nose, eyes softly shutting in muted relish. “Two fingers, at least, bartender. My man back home likes to cut me off.”

“You poor bloke,” Q quips, sharp on every word. “I think we can do better than that, wouldn’t you agree? Worry not, I won’t say a thing.”

James chuckles. “He’ll know regardless.”

Q leans forwards, toying with his mouth over a nipple while giving James’ shoulders and upper arms a deep massage. “Can’t be fooled, then? Doesn’t give you a minute’s privacy, does he?”

“Don’t want it.” Bond’s reply is muffled by a groan at the tension relieved there. The statement doesn’t even give him pause.

Q gestures with his fingers and bends one of James’ legs at the knee, firmly settling him open and vulnerable. He slides inside James, who’s all slick and loose, with a fingertip, adding a second digit almost immediately. The man doesn’t need anything really, but his eyes are still flickering, trying to close with each maddening press and dip into his hole – he’s certainly not complained yet. His hips grind into the intrusion, his insides clench not in resistance but in encouragement, and Q’s gut aches with how sensual that fucking tightness feels, clamping around his fingers like a vise and making him want to spend a century in this bed, to make James want as hungrily as this always.

The moisture of Q’s hair has him perspiring now, and cold beads run down his naked back as he brings James to a precipice where he’s buzzing for more, but can’t find the words when this feels outstanding, too: the way his body complies to fit his lover in, to welcome Q’s caresses each time they call up a fiery, all-consuming warmth in his calves, at the junction of hip and thigh, at the taut skin just below his ribs, within and around the begging skin at his eager hole. When this is what he doesn’t receive, won’t ever receive, from madmen and mensas and murderers and mercenaries (from himself, it must be said) – how could he say ‘more’ when this space is what he needs most?

Q needs to jostle him to bring his dilated gaze back, and when he does it’s only long enough to indicate what he’s going to do, to ensure they’re playing the same game, and not with another beast entirely. Slim but pliant and completely unbreakable, he hikes Bond’s good ankle up so his leg is draped over a shoulder, and leaves the other leg at a comfortable distance to his left, extended and elevated upon the mounds of sheets.

“Like this?” Q asks.

“More or less,” he grunts.

“What does that mean?”

“It means I haven’t taken morphine going on a week now; I think this is as good as us screwing can feel at the moment.”

Q pulls back, eyes alight. “Why?” he edges out.

“Ran out.”

“Mm, you fucking didn’t.” He fastens his teeth into the calf he has lifted, sucking hard before administering kitten licks – soothing, soothing, soothing until the knee. Q nuzzles the mangled scar tissue there, uses only the edge of his tongue to playfully lick at the crook of his lover’s knee. With his other hand, his fingers smoothe over the flushed, ruddy skin of the man’s bollocks, teasing there while James rocks his pelvis imperceptibly with a warm grip around the head of his own cock.

Bond doesn’t have a single tan line, and currently sports a golden mostly-Mediterranean shade from head to toe – it’s as dark as his near-translucent ancestors’ genetics let him get, and it comes with the reward of hundreds of new freckles to count, scattered between the fine blonde hairs all over his skin that are all but hidden from view typically, in the murky light of an average day in Britain. Compared to Q’s undignifiedly pale arse-cheeks – which only saw exposure to daylight in his first year of life, and then the single time they’d smuggled away (by train, shockingly) to Germany’s Baltic beaches and Bond had literally incinerated Q’s every speedo in the fireplace – James embodies Heracles, hedonistic deity of intelligent design and the result of flawless evolution. The sight of it all, the rhythm of his stroking coupled with this _vision_ of maleness, is enough to slow Q’s ministrations, but only long enough for James to chuck the condom wrapper at his abdomen and hitch Q’s body closer with a heel pressing in at his shoulderblade.

“Now,” James says.

Q hums, slicking himself feverishly one last time before hiking a knee over James’ waist and pressing his cockhead to his hole, nearly doubling over at the tight clench there, at the leap in his heart rate all from the way James’ muscles are jumping, the way his lips have already parted around a moan that’s yet to arrive.

It’s guttural and strangely triumphant when the sound does escape, and as his hips pitch forward Q himself hisses, the miraculous pressure closing around his cock snatching his breath. Nearly blinded with a need to go on and give chase after this first taste of closeness he’s been craving for days upon end, he presses in deeper, moving in long full-bodied thrusts that threaten to fuck James into the headboard, through the damn wall. He can’t help but jostle James’ legs in the process, and immediately falters at the sharp, wet intake of breath from the man beneath him, the same man whose heartbeat he can feel everywhere they touch, from groin to pulse point.

“Don’t tiptoe, Q. Don’t even consider–”

“I won’t.”

“You are,” James snaps, writhing on Q’s cock with nowhere else to release the fiery burn building in his hips.

“Tell me if it–”

“It does.” James traps a finger between them where Q has yet to reenter him, tracing by touch alone what’s exposed of the veins along his shaft, going on to slip around the tight rim of his hole as if reminding his partner where to go. “You can make it worth it.”

Q shudders and rocks inside him again, relishing the animalistic dominance he has over James at the moment; he’s taken away the man’s power, certainly, but rewards him tenfold for his loyalty and patience. “Fuck, James, I hate...” Thrusts relentless, he can’t move to soften the stinging grasp he has around Bond’s ankle or the reverberating pound of skin on skin, not with a touch of lips, not even with a gentle caress along his neck, where it gives James shivers.

He moans, sharp and sweet. “–Hate waiting for you, hate thinking whilst I wait– _Oh, shit, you...”_ Q braces himself closer and bends James nearly double, causing his knee to bounce and smack wetly at his own taut chest. The sight below him, of a delectable flush trailing down the length of James’ chest and pooling at the flesh of his arse where their hips mercilessly collide, of James’ eyes glazed and molten with arousal, of James’ body taking him gratefully in a way that they’ve tossed and turned awaiting for 72 hours too many – it knocks the air from his lungs, short-circuits all non-vital processes in his head. Q’s hips shake and breath comes short as he drives in faster, says, “Hate that I give a damn, _God_... _dammit,_ James.”

With a slow grind he bottoms out hard enough to make his lover gasp, breathing out a laugh because he’s frustrated but _Christ_ this feels good and he’d sooner get fixed than catch himself wasting their time together in bed resenting some _one_ instead of, occasionally, some _things._ Q pivots his cock upwards, drilling in as if making a point, making a dozen points he can’t ever begin to articulate when he needs them to be said most.

“I want you here, James _– oh fuck,_ your ass is perfection, can't _–”_

James returns Q’s thrusts blow for blow now, putting pressure on his bad foot all while Q growls at him to quit doing so. “I’m with you,” James agrees with a vigorous nod. “I’m here, Q, don’t hold back...”

Q nods, gritting his teeth, and planting his elbows in the mattress, drives in with a rhythm that’s hard and punishing, hips snapping forwards, his groans muffled in skin and bitten lips. Bond’s back is arching, drenched in sweat and his hand scrambles to take hold of his cock between them. Fucking himself on Q’s cock, fucking into the tight channel of his slick fist, he’s a ravishing vision splayed on their dark sheets. Then he’s jerking his hips once, twice – makes a shallow ‘agh’ of sound and comes all over his hand and stomach. Q dips his head, can hardly intake breath after watching that, and tips into his orgasm with a gasp, a “James, shit,” a last shudder of his hips as he feels the final dregs of come saturate James’ hole. The expression on the man’s face is impossible to read, floating distracted somewhere between wholly slaked and penitent.

He pulls out to little resistance, but James imprisons him in a tight grasp and rolls them over to the dry, pristine other side of the bed before Q gets a complaint in edge-wise. “Careful what you wish for,” James says.

“James,” Q chokes out, chest straining – James lifts himself up by his palms, watching from above as Q struggles to grab for the discarded towel at their side. He lowers his body to the bedsheets slowly, coming to lay half atop Q. For what could well be hours the only sound is their loud, erratic breathing and the soft rustle of Q's ministrations with the towel.

Eventually James emits a whooshing sigh and Q feels the man's next words in his chest as much as he hears them. “You’ll wrap up my ankle before drifting off, won’t you?”

It’s in their best interest.

“Oh, eat me,” Q spits.

Above him, James' chest still heaves and he smirks. "Come off it. I will properly express my gratitude, you know that."

"I'll believe it when I see it." Q tries to put an edge into it, but it doesn't come out very sharp.

"Ye of little faith," James sighs. After a long pause, he speaks again. "You seem to hate a great many things."

Q lets his head fall to the side, contemplates James and the colour of his eyes, the curve of his lips. He reaches to grasp one of James' hands where it rests on his chest. "Well," he says. "Can't have one without the other, can you?"


	8. Chapter 8

Bond clambers down the shaded path to where Q is sitting, his eyes closed until the sound of gravel rouses him. There are no other people about, though it's barely six in the evening on a weekend. James is in those sunglasses that Q knows cost more than his monthly rent; he had been right there in the shop and James had proceeded to try and buy him a pair as well, with prescription and all.

The agent holds a cane – not even that as much as a flimsy walking stick the physical therapy division had thrust into his unwilling hands a dozen times before he gave in – and when he's within a few metres he hikes it over so it clatters at Q's feet. The limp from his romp in South America has only been agitated by successive missions, as every fall tends to cause aftershocks, regardless of the height from which the man drops. He's developed the habit of taking weight funnily, which is only worsened when he guises the pain completely around headquarters, his face rigid while his hips slide into a permanently warped realignment.

Q refuses to let James lift him now, though he can't deny he still fantasizes about it. They can't both wear a straight face when things like this come to pass.

“You'd probably be better off using rather than abusing your chiropractor's implements,” Q remarks, but before picking up the cane he pulls Bond closer by the arm, bringing him to stand between his parted thighs where he sits. “I'd like it if you looked after yourself more, at least out here.” When he voices sentiments like this, he can only know the roiling possessive heat it brings about in his own gut – _I can say this, I will say this, I might just be heard when I say this –_ but he suspects he's shifting relationship paradigms within the strongroom of James' mind too. _You might just act because I said this, you might just care because you're caring for two._ “You lose your joints, you don't get them back, old man.”

“Mm,” James hums his acknowledgment.

“You hear me, yeah?” He wraps long fingers loosely around one arm of the ritzy sunglasses and gently tugs them off so the two of them are not just touching, they're also looking.

“'Course I bloody hear you. It's not a revelation, alright.”

“You're not a prophecy, James. Death's the one certainty there is and you don't even do that, not properly. If you are going to go off by a set date, it's not for many years yet.”

James eyes the glasses where they sit in Q's lap. He moves to take a seat and Q looks away, gives him space for that awkward maneuver James doesn't like him to witness.

“I don't...” Q sighs, his eyes follow an elderly woman along the line of trees until she's out of hearing range again. “I don't want to take you for granted and say you could probably last longer than I will at MI6. I don't want to tell you things I truly believe, ideas _you've misled me_ into believing; I don't think it's juvenile optimism as much as it's based on real past experience when I say I stupidly believe you can and could recover from anything. My point – I shouldn't even have said the other part – is I don't want you to _have_ to.

“Look. I should tell you do what you want, which you will, you do and have done, and my word's nothing to do with it. If you die exhausted and fighting, everything on the line for a country and service you still set great store by, that's fucking awful, it makes me sick to talk about, but you'll stick by it, and I stick by you. Don't you dare for a single moment consider giving all of yourself if this ever has less than your full confidence, though. I will rip you to shreds if I see them sucking you dry and you, you remain about as invested as you are in that squirrel over there. I can't bear it, it's selfish, it dishonours yourself and the thought leaves the taste of bile in my mouth. 

"You won't meet any responsibility halfway, James... I'm well aware. I'm gone if you lose sight of your responsibility to me, but more importantly you will have lost yourself, and try all you want, that's not something you'll get back in a million years.”

A slim Scandinavian-looking boyish type soars by on vintage rollerskates, in no more than a tank and flimsy cotton shorts. The man hasn’t broken a sweat but his legs are muscled and tense, his agility enough to stop both their gazes.

“Bet you’d kill to have a go at that,” Bond says, and it’s gravelly but not resentful, doesn’t burn upon delivery.

“Bet _you_ would,” Q counters serenely.

“Thought you went for the toned types.”

“And I thought I taught you age has nothing to do with experience. Maybe he’d be teaching you a thing or two.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t settle for anything less," James replied dryly. "Above all, I go weak in the knees when I come across those jaded types. You know, they don’t explicitly welcome my advances, but somehow won’t allow me to walk away either.”

Q rocks the cane gently between his palms with ears perked, but his eyes remain contemplative. “I’m with you everywhere and always, it wouldn’t do to tire too easily. Or at all.”

Bond nods non-committally. “I suppose not.”

“If you could leave England today...”

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t.”

“I’m afraid, too, then. Pity, rather, that I’ve become irrevocably intertwined with the affairs of my country. There's no way for me to leave SIS and stay here. There's no chance I stay with SIS much longer. And there's no chance you leave SIS and the country.”

James’ crystalline eyes have pained creases around them. “My allegiances aren’t exactly as they once were, Q.”

“How comforting.” The quartermaster sighs and hitches his leg up so he can turn into the back of their bench, crumbling into its iron brace. "The antithesis of an answer."

“It’s the best I can offer.”

“I know that.” It’s only a soft press of breath away from coming out as an incendiary snap.

“You know that.” Bond’s voice is too weary to bear intonation.

It’s almost ten minutes before either of the men speaks again, and then only because it's prompted by the visual stimulus of the same roller skater, maneuvering his lithe torso so he weaves back and forth across the path, dipping in and out of the shadows cast by the endless line of trees.

“You’re not even slightly tempted to approach him, then? It would only take one of us to cinch it; two we may as well tell HQ we’ll be ill for the rest of the week.”

Q’s gaze hasn’t followed their prey, only the site where they both spotted him again. “I don’t feel like trying out strangers, James,” he says, “when I wake up with a different man in my bed every morning.”

Bond says nothing.

“...I only wish I would just once wake up to the man who sees reason and takes the escape I’ve offered him on a goddamned silver platter.”


	9. Chapter 9

“Do you have what I asked for?” Q asks, looks up and realises the shoes he thought belonged to a colleague are actually James’.

James quirks his lips to the side and rubs his forehead in slow circles with his palm, coming to lean on Q’s desk. The man faces the expanse of the headquarters; on different floors, employees are engrossed in their many computer screens and devices, are organised in various spaces to collaborate over this challenge or that debate, are consumed enough by their tasks at hand that the sight of the agent and his quartermaster convening like this doesn’t garner a single person’s attention.

“I believe I do,” James replies.

He stands, silent and unburdened, for a long time at Q’s desk. Catches no one’s eye, makes no move to go back to his own responsibilities. Every time Q thinks he’s trained his own breathing back into working order, trained his lips to remain together and not ludicrously gaping, his chest jumps discordantly once again, his mouth opens around a silent gasp of surprise or an erratic sigh. “007,” he breathes just once, as if the words made their way out of their own accord.

The quartermaster returns to the catalogue of artillery stocks that he’s been sorting through in MI6’s database. He must. Occasionally, leaving his left hand to do the work of the mouse, his right hand draws away from the keyboard to slip over to where James’ own rests curled around the edge of the desk. It’s just a touch of skin to skin, one spindly digit pressing around a hand with coarser skin, with more calluses, ridges, and blemishes. It can’t be more than that touch, on and off for what feels like ages until they get off at four in the afternoon; Bond is scheduled to leave London for Eritrea in twelve hours.

Q closes out every programme and logs out though his task list for the day remains largely unfinished – he’ll be in early tomorrow anyway, early and mostly alone with his thoughts, which is the most productive set of circumstances, he finds.

When he slides his chair beneath the desk Bond already has Q’s blazer folded at his elbow, already has his eyes narrowed and focused somewhere past the glass doors, seemingly planning an escape route.

“You’re meant to be leaving in advance, James. There’s no need to posture; my subordinates need to fear me more than they fear you, and they know full well we’re to be left alone.”

They kiss in the stairwell some three flights away from the ground floor – with the slightest urging from James Q nearly collapses back against the wall, his pulse skyrocketing even before his shoulders hit the stone. It seems neither one trusts their mouths to speak and say the right – or rather, not say the wrong – things, but they’re sufficiently delayed that Q is fit to burst with reactions, that James’ tongue and lips and mouth and heat are not enough to distract from every damn thing– they need to– he’s going to have to undertake public transportation.

He dodges James’ advances and races down the rest of the stairs, waiting impatiently at their foot as the man jogs down to where he stands, jittery and determined. James hisses, “What are–” but Q shakes his head, shushes under his breath softly before opening the door to the lobby.

Once on the street, busy with pedestrians but not overwhelmingly so, Q weaves his way between bodies on the sidewalk, eventually coming to stand beneath a bus stop one block away from the SIS building. Again, James pulls up moments later. Teeth gritting, Q gnaws at the knuckle he’s braced between his teeth, stoppering an onslaught of words. He huffs a breath out his nose and before Bond can ask a thing, he tears his hand from his mouth and says, “It’s the 36 we want, correct?”

James cocks an eyebrow. “To Hyde Park Corner, yes.”

“And, um, _shit”_ – he’s digging his fingers through what seems to be a veritable sea of coins in his trousers pocket – “how much is–”

A cool touch at his exposed wrist gives him pause; he looks up, locks eyes with James’ steadfast gaze. “I’ve got it,” the man says. “Let me, please.”

Their journey takes them across the Vauxhall Bridge (which James has said the late M always had an unsettling fondness for, gaudiness and all) and in Q’s blundering race to the front of the bus at their stop he nearly, _nearly_ collides with a middle-aged woman, but that and the oddly serene walk in the park barely register – he can’t recall any details, really, by the time they arrive at their destination. At their bench they sit shoulder pressed to shoulder and Q waits with increasing difficulty for what his partner is going to say.

They’ve both set their mobiles aside, completely shut down.

Finally, James speaks: “I want you to know that I took time not because I was unsure of you. I simply… cannot see any chance of success, no matter what manifestation this idea takes.”

“James–”

“And again, it was – I guarantee – not because of a lack of faith in you and your abilities. Rather, I forced myself again and again to weigh the risks and benefits. If you cut yourself loose and achieve the escape you fully deserve, you’ll be content and safe; I can see no flaw there. If my incorporation into that scheme multiplies the possibility that everything crashes down around the two of us, how can I justify ruining not just the evasion but also ruining you and me?”

Q’s gaze is heavy, bold and unyielding. “I suggest you stop making decisions in that way, Bond. Can’t decide what ruins us; only I’m allowed to hyperanalyse the future.”

Beside him, James purses his lips grimly, murmurs, “If or when we become… incompatible…”

“Oh, please, you couldn’t speak more clinically if you tried. Say it.”

“Alright, say we’re finished one day in the distant or not-so-distant future. I can’t say I’ll regret leaving; can you say the same? You know you’ll _never_ be tempted to go back? Not even with a fantastic deal on offer for whoever can sell me out to SIS?”

Q tuts. “I won’t be offended because I know you trust me better than that, James. I’ve no need to go back and that won’t change – what I’m tempted by is technology and its beautiful, unlimited potential, not my desk and my org chart and my pension. There’s no price that can be put on my freedom from that institution, and I refuse to put a price on yours either. You won’t be sold out. And plant your seeds of doubt all you fucking please, you won’t sell me out either; I trust you with my life and identity, that’s not a new development.

“So yes, maybe we fail. Maybe we’re pitted against each other, maybe we’re manipulated and threatened and hurt in the process. I don’t value me out there and you stuck here over the possibility of both of us successfully detached from MI6, despite the risks.”

He dips his head, exhausted by the nerves of the past hours, so his brow rests at Bond’s shoulder. “We will do anything and everything to minimise the hazards, love. If I…” Q sighs, picks back up: “If I had to paint you a picture of where I want to be in a year’s time, the only sureties are that I’m not with MI6 and I am with you.”

“At the pool bar in those briefs.”

“Mm. In a chalet.”

“Our penthouse in Quebec.”

“And Vancouver, perhaps.”

“Our yacht in Buenos Aires.”

“No yachts. Our château in the Loire.”

“You’re well aware I can’t say no, bastard. You’ll be the death of me.”

“No, no, no, James; I’m going to give you life. Whatever it takes.”

James snuffles a laugh, twisting his head to place an off-centre kiss at Q’s temple. “We’ll get out, Q.”

Far too drained to sit up, Q lifts an eyebrow and his lip twitches in amusement. “You’re absolutely spot-on, James. Stretch our damn legs.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Betaed by the absolutely extraordinary one-in-a-million circ_bamboo – thank you for keeping me sane, covering my ass, and for being insanely kind through the entire painstaking writing process.
> 
> And to you, thank you so much for reading.


End file.
